Deeplinks

Personal data is a hot commodity. All sorts of businesses trade in data concerning what we buy, how much credit we have, where we live, what our interests are. This information is sold to advertisers, who then eagerly use it to more precisely target people that they hope will be interested in their products ? leading to all those annoying catalogs that litter your doorstep, for example, or the junk emails that choke your inbox every day.

Newsweek's top story today exposes the desperation of the telecommunications companies in light of cases like EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T, which accuses the telecom giant of assisting in the illegal surveillance of millions of Americans. The telecoms and the Administration are heaping pressure on Congress to get a 'get out of jail free' card for their role in helping the government spy on their customers:

The campaign — which involves some of Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms — has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.

According to UH, it's a simple quid pro quo copyright assignment in exchange for education: "The University is providing you with a valuable opportunity to learn, grow and create during the course. Only a portion of the cost of providing courses is covered by your tuition and fees. Universities commonly use earnings from the licensing or sale of intellectual property to help cover their operating costs." UH has also said that it will use its rights to protect UH's reputation, in other words, to make sure students don't go submitting works to festivals, posting them on YouTube, sending them to prospective employers, and so on, without UH permission. If any university tried to control the release and distribution of a professor's latest book, such a policy would immediately be recognized for the censorship that it is. Too bad that recognition doesn't extend to students.

Should telecom companies like AT&T be given a ?get out of jail free? card for their participation in the Bush administration?s warrantless wiretapping program? That?s what Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Ken Wainstein asked for on Tuesday in a House committee. Strangely enough, it appears that Congressional Democrats are seriously considering playing along. As the New York Times reported in an article on the House committee hearings, ?Democratic Congressional aides say they believe that a deal is likely to provide protection for the companies.?

EFF's letter offers assistance to the FCC in conducting the investigation, given our role in both the litigation against AT&T and our groundbreaking Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) work. We also point out that under the Communications Act, the FCC does not need to pry into the uses that the FBI or the NSA make of American phone records -- the law is violated when the information is illegally given to the spooks and feds and no further information is needed for the FCC to reprimand the carriers. We also point out that one of the arguments the Commissioner used to deny Representative Markey's first request for an investigation -- based on the National Security Act -- has twice been rejected by Judge Walker in the NSA litigation.

During yesterday's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell tap danced around a critical question about tapping communications. When asked how many Americans were tapped he responded only by saying "there is confusion of what the word tap means," and then downshifted his discussion to "targets." Unfortunately, Chairman Conyers' followup question asked changed the term again, asking who was "overheard."